I've had that physics monologue. When I was a young kid I distinctly recall the first time my uncle gave me some magnets to play with, and how amazed I was that they affected each other w/o actually touching. Some time during my physics education it dawned on me that gravity does the same thing, even though I'd taken that for granted for a long time. Not like it really changed anything conceptually for me, but it somehow made gravity equally amazing and mysterious.

I'd say "trees are (made of) air" is a bit of a stretch: most of their building blocks and energy[citation needed] come from the ground. Right? Right? I have never given it much thought or looked it up, but right now I'm having a hard time believing trees get all that mass from a bunch of carbon oxides in the air. Apparently I got disproved over 300 years ago. Should've been obvious, plants and trees don't eat much soil. They do drink quite a bit of water next to breathing CO2, but carbon atoms heavily outweigh hydrogen by mass (and I guess the bulk of the water is used for 'living' or cooling down or whatever plants do that cause them to evaporate lots of water).

If I were in computer security, my internal monologue would probably be: "I wonder what silly name for a particular/category of malware will hit the press today, while my boss refuses to switch to that newer software package so we can finally trash that Windows XP machine, which has so many custom patches to maintain that we don't have time to audit other parts of the company. And don't get me started on our ancient password policy; that xkcd comic was years ago! Anyway, tests are running, time to read some webcomics.".

Flumble wrote:I'd say "trees are (made of) air" is a bit of a stretch: most of their building blocks and energy[citation needed] come from the ground. Right? Right? I have never given it much thought or looked it up, but right now I'm having a hard time believing trees get all that mass from a bunch of carbon oxides in the air. Apparently I got disproved over 300 years ago. Should've been obvious, plants and trees don't eat much soil. They do drink quite a bit of water next to breathing CO2, but carbon atoms heavily outweigh hydrogen by mass (and I guess the bulk of the water is used for 'living' or cooling down or whatever plants do that cause them to evaporate lots of water).

Flumble, you somehow nerd-sniped me with that link. I'm 36 minutes past the end of my lunch break for reading that. (Luckily I'm also up 42 minutes from getting stubborn about finishing something Monday night.)

"That big tube down the side was officially called a "systems tunnel", which is aerospace contractor speak for "big tube down the side."

In a sense, you could say that most of the ground is also made of air, inasmuch as oxygen is the greater portion by mass of the Earth. Granted it's all reacted with other elements (e.g. iron oxide, silicon oxide...) but so is the carbon in a tree, so if that's "made of air" then so are most rocks.

Pfhorrest wrote:In a sense, you could say that most of the ground is also made of air, inasmuch as oxygen is the greater portion by mass of the Earth. Granted it's all reacted with other elements (e.g. iron oxide, silicon oxide...) but so is the carbon in a tree, so if that's "made of air" then so are most rocks.

Or, as the astronomer with the thermodynamic formula for initials says, "We are all literally star [including supernova and neutron] dust"

Flumble wrote:[s]I guess the bulk of the water is used for 'living' or cooling down or whatever plants do that cause them to evaporate lots of water.

If I recall correctly, one of the main purposes of evaporating water at the leaves is to trigger the transport of nutrients up from the soil. The water lost at the leaves is replaced by water carried up the trunk from the roots. It's been mentioned elsewhere that plants don't use much in the way of nutrients from the soil, but fixed Nitrogen is a big one, and doesn't change the soil mass much since it's produced from atmospheric N2. Yet another way that trees are made of air!

Now, if I can only get a Botanist to tell me how the trees overcome the vacuum limit on siphoning water - we can't draw water higher than about 33 feet by applying vacuum at the top of a column, and somehow trees manage to get the water up to the top leaves of giant Redwoods. I assume capillary action is part of it, but it's been a mystery to me for a long time.

*Edit in response to Caffiene's response below*That was enlightening, thanks!

So, the answer is that the xylem that transport water up the tree trunk don't afford nucleation sites for boiling to start, and cohesion between water molecules is equivalent to about 15 atmospheres of pressure. Between those two facts and the 1Atm positive pressure at the roots we can get 16 atmospheres of water head in the tree before it hits its growth limit due to the physics of water, so ~528 feet is the maximum height for a tree. Coastal redwoods reach ~72% of that at 380ft. Good to know!

Zinho wrote:Now, if I can only get a Botanist to tell me how the trees overcome the vacuum limit on siphoning water - we can't draw water higher than about 33 feet by applying vacuum at the top of a column, and somehow trees manage to get the water up to the top leaves of giant Redwoods. I assume capillary action is part of it, but it's been a mystery to me for a long time.

True story - Boehringer Ingelheim has a large office near me which I've had occasion to be in. The hallways are along the outside, and the offices are along the inside of the building, and the hallways are lined with windows so that everyone walking around can enjoy the view of the gorgeous campus. The windows are in two parts - top and bottom, with a sash in the middle, which hits right at horizon level.

WHY?????

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

This is sometimes due to "value engineering" or poor decisions after the drawing leaves the architect's hands (although yes, sometimes it is the architect). Most of the time when I've seen that sort of thing happen, it's due to client-side or construction-side decisions from people who cannot visualize how a change on a 2D plan manifests in real life 3D.

True story - Boehringer Ingelheim has a large office near me which I've had occasion to be in. The hallways are along the outside, and the offices are along the inside of the building, and the hallways are lined with windows so that everyone walking around can enjoy the view of the gorgeous campus. The windows are in two parts - top and bottom, with a sash in the middle, which hits right at horizon level.

WHY?????

Jose

Belial wrote:I am not even in the same country code as "the mood for this shit."

Flumble wrote:Are those hallways wide enough to line with chairs and/or small desks along the windows?

Yeah, I suppose. But they really should have used single pane windows.

I suspect it's more like "it looked great in the model, and the model sold the job".

Jose

Order of the Sillies, Honoris Causam - bestowed by charlie_grumbles on NP 859 * OTTscar winner: Wordsmith - bestowed by yappobiscuts and the OTT on NP 1832 * Ecclesiastical Calendar of the Order of the Holy Contradiction * Please help addams if you can. She needs all of us.

freezeblade wrote:This is sometimes due to "value engineering" or poor decisions after the drawing leaves the architect's hands (although yes, sometimes it is the architect). Most of the time when I've seen that sort of thing happen, it's due to client-side or construction-side decisions from people who cannot visualize how a change on a 2D plan manifests in real life 3D.

True story - Boehringer Ingelheim has a large office near me which I've had occasion to be in. The hallways are along the outside, and the offices are along the inside of the building, and the hallways are lined with windows so that everyone walking around can enjoy the view of the gorgeous campus. The windows are in two parts - top and bottom, with a sash in the middle, which hits right at horizon level.

WHY?????

Jose

And sometimes those decisions happen because the architect has no idea that what they are designing is impossible or impractical, and the engineer/builder makes the best compromise they can.

The plans may also be altered for cost reasons—the builder decides that it is cheaper to use a different size of windowpanes and doesn’t want to bother with the time and money that it would take to send the blueprints back to the architect for an additional design revision.

ucim wrote:True story - Boehringer Ingelheim has a large office near me which I've had occasion to be in. The hallways are along the outside, and the offices are along the inside of the building, and the hallways are lined with windows so that everyone walking around can enjoy the view of the gorgeous campus. The windows are in two parts - top and bottom, with a sash in the middle, which hits right at horizon level.

WHY?????

The architect was either much shorter than you or much taller than you.

Be glad there's no internal monologue for a soldier with PTSD, I guess.

I wonder what a social psych grad's internal monologue is like. I suppose it depends on the environments they've experienced during and after their education in that field, what their life was like at the time, how long it's been since they graduated and whether their experiences since then have corroborated or belied that education plus how they're doing in general at the time, as much as it does on the behaviour and mannerisms of the people around them and how those compare to the established norms of ...

Geologists and astronomers would probably be saying something along the lines of "Humans are insignificant specks to the Earth, the universe, and time." Nihilism is easy in those fields...

Flumble wrote:Or maybe the architect hates people who enjoy views or the architect is very pragmatic and doesn't want people standing still staring and blocking the hallway.

Are those hallways wide enough to line with chairs and/or small desks along the windows?

freezeblade wrote:This is sometimes due to "value engineering" or poor decisions after the drawing leaves the architect's hands (although yes, sometimes it is the architect). Most of the time when I've seen that sort of thing happen, it's due to client-side or construction-side decisions from people who cannot visualize how a change on a 2D plan manifests in real life 3D.

....Architect: "Why. Why would someone put a wall there. why."

Some architects sacrifice way too much practicality for their art. A prime example is Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Falling Waters house, which would be more more aptly named Falling Apart. The house maintenance costs far exceeded the building costs decades ago, largely because Wright's architectural/artistic vision called for materials completely unsuited to Pennsylvania's climate [not bad for southwestern US though where he has few homes too]. Mind you, anyone constructing buildings, formally educated or not, from anywhere in Northeastern US at the time would have told Wright as much, so he either knew this and did it anyway, or was negligently ignorant.

I lost a lot of respect for Wright after visiting Falling Waters a few years ago...

I'm not one to defend all Architects, and I will fully admit that some of the bigger name Architects (ones that the public seem to know about, aka "Rock Star Architects") make decisions which are more about "the concept" or "the look" than practicality. Speaking from my own experience, good designs have been mangled more often due to client/construction reasons than problems which stem from the design intent or vision from the architectural team.

Belial wrote:I am not even in the same country code as "the mood for this shit."

freezeblade wrote:I'm not one to defend all Architects, and I will fully admit that some of the bigger name Architects (ones that the public seem to know about, aka "Rock Star Architects") make decisions which are more about "the concept" or "the look" than practicality. Speaking from my own experience, good designs have been mangled more often due to client/construction reasons than problems which stem from the design intent or vision from the architectural team.

I'm sure. It's easy to focus on the extremes.

Relatedly, we can blame an architect for the hated open office design too. Although, I guess we can't blame them for all the copycats later. History of the first open office and interviews with the architect in this podcast: https://www.npr.org/templates/transcrip ... =636667382 (NPR Planet Money #704. The transcript is in the link but it's much better listened to).

freezeblade wrote:I'm not one to defend all Architects, and I will fully admit that some of the bigger name Architects (ones that the public seem to know about, aka "Rock Star Architects") make decisions which are more about "the concept" or "the look" than practicality. Speaking from my own experience, good designs have been mangled more often due to client/construction reasons than problems which stem from the design intent or vision from the architectural team.

If a "good design" has to be changed for construction reasons, it wasn't a good design. Something that is impractical to build is just as impractical as something that is impractical to use after it is built.

The solution is pretty obvious: make the architects subordinate to the engineers instead of the other way around. Engineers know how to design stuff that will work. Architects know how to design stuff that looks a certain way. One of those is obviously more important than the other one.

WriteBrainedJR wrote:If a "good design" has to be changed for construction reasons, it wasn't a good design. Something that is impractical to build is just as impractical as something that is impractical to use after it is built.

The solution is pretty obvious: make the architects subordinate to the engineers instead of the other way around. Engineers know how to design stuff that will work. Architects know how to design stuff that looks a certain way. One of those is obviously more important than the other one.

This argument leans heavy on the whole "hur dur architects only make stuff look pretty" argument, and ignore the fact that we not only still take 5+ years of intensive engineering classes, but that we also have multiple, 8-hour+ tests before even becoming a licensed architect that can sign off on drawings with a city/county, and that's after getting an enormous amount of practical, field-driven internship hours under an engineer or architect who is licensed. "Construction reasons" in this context usually means "this seems too expensive/time consuming to build it the way the architect wants, so lets do it cheaper/easier" usually without deferring to the architectural team's vision or master plan, or disregarding it.

Belial wrote:I am not even in the same country code as "the mood for this shit."

Reka wrote:I am none of those professions, but I regularly have all of these thoughts except the "trees = air" one.

I am none of those professions, but I regularly have only one of these thoughts, the "trees = air" one.

Trees are 90% air....or so my golf coach once told me.

Saw a chart somewhere somewhen that showed the chances of hitting a golf ball through the foliage of a tree based on species of tree. When you have no better shot, I guess. Hitting leaves only was the best case scenario ... claimed to be calculated from the average branch density. All conifers sucked. I believe the best odds were with some type of ash.